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Virginia Satir Biography -

Virginia emphasized the importance of family history and its influence on people’s lives, and she often used her own family background to illustrate certain points in her teaching. Virginia’s grandparents on both sides were born in Germany between 1870 and 1875. According to Virginia, both of her grandmothers came from a privileged socioeconomic class and married working-class men. Virginia later speculated that her grandparents left Germany in disgrace for what was then regarded as an unacceptable breach of social custom. Raised in a climate of negative feelings toward Germans Virginia resented her heritage for quite some time. She said, "I had a lot between me and my heritage, and I wouldn’t even go to Germany for many years. But, I have been going now since 1975, and this last time I really felt that I had come to my homeland" (Russell 2).

Virginia’s father, Oscar Alfred Reinnard Pagenkopf, was the youngest of 13 children. He was a farmer and had very little formal education. Virginia remembered, "I think my father always felt a little cheated because of that" (King 15). This feeling of having been cheated fit into a larger framework of low self-esteem that Virginia ascribed to her father. Even so, she learned a great deal from her father’s strengths, especially the importance of honesty.

Her mother, Minnie Happe Pagenkopf, came from a family of 7 children. Virginia remembered her mother as a person who was always looking for ways to fix things that were wrong. "I think that is probably one of the reasons I am successful with people who nobody else wanted to have anything to do with. I saw the potential. She taught me that" (King 17). Minnie felt education was very important, so much that she insisted the family move to the city when Virginia, the eldest, started high school in 1929.

Besides her parents’ differences in education, there were also religious differences between them. When Virginia was about five years old, she had appendicitis. Her mother, a Christian Scientist, did not want to take Virginia to the doctor. Her father waited, but seeing that Virginia did not improve, he finally took her to the hospital. Virginia’s appendix had ruptured. She was very ill and stayed in the hospital for several months. Despite this unfortunate experience, Virginia talked about her years growing up as good ones. She enjoyed the farm and the animals. She grew up learning a sense of ethics and values from her parents and feeling support from them.

Virginia was born on June 26, 1916 on her parents’ farm in Neillsville, Wisconsin. She was followed 18 months later by twins: Russell and Roger. After the twins came Edith in 1921 and then Ray, the baby, in 1923. As the eldest of five, Virginia felt a sense of responsibility for her siblings, and she talked about taking care of them during their years growing up on the farm.

The farm provided Virginia with numerous illustrations to use in teaching. One such story was that of an old cast-iron pot, which she used as a metaphor for self-esteem:

When I was a little girl, I lived on a farm in Wisconsin. On our back porch was a huge black iron pot, which had lovely rounded sides and stood on three legs. My mother made her own soap, so for part of the year the pot was filled with soap. (The New Peoplemaking 20)

She explained other uses for the pot.

[A]t other times, my father used it to store manure for my mother’s flower beds. We came to call it the "3-S pot.". Anyone who wanted to use the pot faced two questions: What is the pot now full of, and how full is it?

 

Long afterward, when people told me about themselves—whether they felt full, empty, dirty, or even "cracked" I thought of that old pot. One day many years ago, a family was sitting in my office struggling to find words to tell each other how they felt about themselves. I remembered the black pot and told them the story. Soon the members of the family were talking about their individual "pots", whether they contained feelings of worth or of guilt, shame, or uselessness. They told me later how useful this metaphor was to them. (20-21)